The Cinderella Effect
by yellow 14
Summary: A slightly different version of the story Cinderella. A somewhat darker one. Written for The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition round 12 and for story beginnings challenge.


Disclaimer: I don't own and never will

AN: Written for The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition round 12 and for story beginnings challenge.

AN2: Although the wording in the challenge is sneakers, in Britain we tend to call them trainers and so I have changed that word.

Her worn trainers pounded the pavement, and she ran. Behind her, a pair of dementors slowly glided after her, their long dark shapes intimidating and cold. A sharp crack and the ledge behind her fell down.

"You can't escape mudblood!" a harsh male voice shouted after her. She couldn't tell who he was, but in any case it didn't really matter. He was chasing her down and she was trying to escape. She paused looked around at the empty streets around her. Nobody would see anything or be able to help her. She had to escape under her own steam.

If she was a few years older, she would have probably apparated away. But in the wizarding world, fourteen year old witches didn't learn.

A cold, slimy hand grabbed her shoulder and she twisted away hard, the rattle of the creature's breathing rattling in her ears. Running hard, she ducked into a narrow side street, hoping that it would provide perhaps a little better cover. More crucially, provide a way out and not a dead end.

She really didn't want it to be a dead end.

She turned to look over her shoulder as she ran. Her pursuers were hot on her tail, but she was beginning to put some distance between herself and them. Another curse shot out and skimmed the wall behind her. The wizard wasn't a very good shot either, another thing in her favour.

Unfortunately looking back also meant that she didn't see the wall in front of her.

CRASH!

For a moment the young witch sat on the ground, dazed and unsteady. She stared in disbelief at the wall in front of her and she smacked her fists against the wall. It wasn't fair! She had tried to stay out of trouble. She wasn't a fighter, had stayed away from Dumbledore's Army and the like. She didn't CHOOSE to have magic and she certainly didn't want to be caught up in a civil war. But here she was, about to be caught and if she was lucky imprisoned in Azkaban just for having the 'wrong' sort of parents.

Two dementors glided around the corner and she shivered. She looked at the wall once more. Perhaps it was better this way. No more running, no more fear…

"It looks like you're going nowhere little mudblood," the wizard said with a smirk on his face. "Little thieves like you belong in Azkaban."

It was his last sentence that invigorated her. She might be many things, but a thief was not one of them. She looked at the wall once more. The wall wasn't that high and there were gaps where the wall was chipped. She pulled out her wand and threw a curse at him. He threw himself out of the way and she threw her hands onto the top of the wall and began pulling herself up, desperation lending her strength she didn't know she had. Her feet slipped on the wall, as they found holds in the chipped holes and once again a cold slimy hand grabbed her, this time on the ankle. With a sharp pull, she slipped out of the creature's grip once more. Throwing herself to the ground on the other side, she ran.

"You can't run forever mudblood!" the wizard bellowed in frustration. The young witch he had been chasing however didn't hear him, concentrating as she was on escaping.

One of the dementors approached him with something in it's hands and placed the object in the hands of the wizard. He looked at the item and smirked.

It was a well worn shoe.

More specifically, it was a well-worn shoe that had been until very recently, on the foot of the young witch he had been chasing. He smirked. He would enjoy returning this shoe to its owner if it was the last thing he did!

The young witch eventually slowed to a halt, puffing and gasping for breath, confident that she had put enough distance between her and her pursuer. She sat down heavily on the ground as she regained her breath.

"Oh shit!" she cursed as she looked at her feet and more importantly, her missing shoe. Then she began to laugh hysterically. It wasn't funny in the slightest, but somehow she couldn't stop herself laughing, more out of relief than anything else. She had lost her shoe, but considering how close she had come to losing a lot more, it was a small price to pay.

**HPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHP**

The street was quiet and the streetlights dim. It was a typical autumn night in a typical English town. In the high street (if such a term could really be applied to the handful of shops there), a furtive and secretive figure slowly sneaked down the street, glancing this way and that.

The young witch of the previous segment obviously didn't make a habit of trying to be unnoticed. And why should she have? Before recent events, she was a normal young witch attending Hogwarts. Survival was hardly likely to be an issue before and not something she had ever given much thought.

Still, nothing happened to her as she walked or more accurately sneaked her way down the street. Certainly coming here had been hard enough and her feet ached, especially the one without a shoe. Even magically transforming something else into a replacement shoe was out of the question. For a start, her ability in transfiguration was best described as poor and secondly she would have preferred to avoid using magic as much as possible. The trace was still there after all and she didn't want to risk drawing attention to herself. After all, there was a difference between ignorance and outright stupidity.

She looked up at the sole shoe shop in the town. Under normal circumstances, she would have just bought a new pair of shoes in the day, maybe even have caught a bus into Canterbury and shopped there with her friends, while wearing a pair of shoddy old trainers. But those were normal circumstances and normal was not something that could really be used to describe her life any more. Instead, she turned into an alley beside the shop and walked up to the back door. She pointed her wand at the lock (with any luck she would be in and out before the Snatchers and Death Eaters arrived. At least, she hoped so.) With a whispered charm, the door opened and she stepped in.

The store was predictably dark, with stacks of shoes leaning from the walls. She was in the storeroom.

"Lumos"

The room lit up and the young witch looked up in surprise. Standing in front of her was the wizard who had been chasing her earlier.

"You left your shoe behind," he said with a smirk as he stepped forward. The young witch just stared, frozen in place. It was just so…surreal. In her mind, there was a separation of muggle and magical worlds. Not a conscious one, but one none the less. And having a wizard, a dark wizard no less with the worst prejudices of his kind, vividly broke that barrier. It screamed out wrong, jarred here senses and for a few minutes her brain refused to accept what her eyes and ears were telling her and by the time it did, it was too late. He had closed the gap between them and now his lit wand was poked against her chest.

"Goodbye mudblood," he hissed and there was a flash of green. Technically he was supposed to bring them in alive, but nobody was likely to look too closely these days. The questions were more of a formality really, a façade of giving the filth a hope of being accepted by the new order and besides which, it was practically a mercy really. Why would anyone want to live as a mudblood now their secrets were revealed to the world?

He looked down at the body of the girl he had just killed. Should he remove the body or just leave it to be found, he wondered to himself. The he smiled and pulled out her discarded trainer from his robes, the one she had left behind when he tried to catch her earlier and tossed it at her feet. It seemed fitting really. Twirling on his heel, he apparated away with a crack.

AN: Yes, I know I didn't give either of the characters names. It's something that I started unintentionally and then decided to stick with it.

AN2: Personally I think that I could write a bigger, multi-chapter version of this story, but needs must. Maybe later


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